Notes Writing

Production Designer’s Notes No.1 — Girl America

Production Designer’s Notes No.1 — Amerikánka

Text
Girl America (Amerikánka)
Author
Jan Kadlec
Published

Our impression of reality is formed by the sum of memories, and memories are continuously updated with convictions about these emotions creating a multi-layered library of memories.

Dreams are not visions of the future, but memories that in the dream world are differently accentuated according to the intensity of an emotional sketch. We consequently arrive at this sketch in the future as if it was another lived memory.  So, it’s not a vision of the future, but an image of the future that reality created from memories that in each projected moment become another layer generating new ones in the library of memories.

The seemingly different reality in society is the same because it’s built on a subconsciously agreed upon perception of an experienced event, even if it’s often seen with different emotions by different people. Such a meeting of similar emotions and memories is only a mutual agreement about the fact that a sun-lit landscape must be perceived as something beautiful.

We are created from memories and that’s the place where we exist and reside.

The visual concept of the American Chick film is based on explication of the reality as a collection of memories stored in the images of strong emotions. This gallery of otherwise processed and constant images is in some places enriched by a newly discovered visuality. The sum of the emotions and different perception of memories creates an unbelievable notion of the reality in the world of the film’s heroine.

Each chapter of her life is presented in a different light and different colours. The sourceof these emotional and visual deviations of our world in any specific scene/image is to be explained in the framework of the story.

Green represents memories of her home where Ema’s mother used to cover the black and white TV screen with a green plastic gel cover. It visually influenced her stored memories in a significant way.

Desaturated images of the orphanage are based on the agreement of the visual perception of that time period, because in general the colours were suppressed and oppressed.

The use of red is based on the emotion and image of the discarded red costumes. In Ema’s solitude, the costumes represent her mother. The album of these specific memories and emotions associated with the colour red gradually create a dangerous and differently painful idea of reality in the heroine.

In this film, yellow personifies defiance in a problematic situation. The moment yellow becomes a metaphor for defiance was when Ema’s brother walks out on the mother’s world and leaves behind his yellow T-shirt and a yellow light that was turned on. This means of expression stuck in her memory and is perceived by Ema as a protective shield provided by her brother, as well as a symbol of defiance.

Different perceptions of the otherwise same architecture is caused by the number of stored memories and therefore the ability of a deeper analysis of the perceived reality. What could have been perceived as compact in the past is now, thanks to the excess of information and contradictory emotions, barely stable and vice versa.

Jan Kadlec

Next note RATS — Ill.Eg.All Writing · Production design concept · 2020